Andy Cole: My nephew woke me up and said, ‘I’ll be your kidney donor’

Thom GibbsSun, November 1, 2026 at 6:00 AM UTC

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Things could have been easier for Cole had he sought help earlier - Dave Thompson for The TelegraphGive to our 2026 Christmas Charity Appeal

People tell Andy Cole he is looking well, and they are right, but it is only down to his sheer bloody-mindedness. Ten years ago, his friends, family and anyone seeing him on television were concerned about the former footballer’s appearance.

No longer the lithe striker who scored 187 Premier League goals for six clubs, Cole looked puffy and poorly, beyond the standard middle-aged spread of an ex-athlete who has let themselves go. Water retention and bloating are symptoms of kidney failure, which came for Cole after catching a virus in the summer of 2015. In April 2017, he had the transplant he needed, but it would be glib to assume that this was a happy ending.

Nine years later, Cole, now 55, is not sorry for himself, nor adopting the rhapsodic tone of a witness to a miracle. We meet at a golf course just beyond Barnet where he speaks plainly about his complicated recovery, to launch The Telegraph’s Christmas Appeal. Kidney Research UK is one of our selected charities for 2026, and contains the Andy Cole Fund, which focuses on transplant research and support for people with kidney failure.

There are none of the classic convalescent bromides from Cole: the language of miracles and “full recoveries”. He has never been a man for such easy clichés and his reality is more knotty. The way he tells his story is arrestingly unvarnished, relatably miserable and suffused with stereotypical masculine responses to being unwell. Denial, mainly.

“You’re a man, and as a man you’ve just got to get on with it, that’s the way you’re programmed,” he says. “I remember what my dad was like when he was working as a miner and I never saw him take a day off work, even when he was ill.

“So I’m like ‘what am I doing? What am I complaining about it?’. I don’t think it’s politically correct now to say you ‘man up’, but that’s what you do, you get on with it.”

That approach has its place, but it is important to deploy stubbornness in the correct direction. It might be a useful mindset for Cole now, post-transplant and living with a condition he will be managing for the rest of his life, taking more than a dozen tablets every day. It was less helpful when it delayed his treatment.

Cole was working in his ambassadorial role for Manchester United in Vietnam when he noticed an oddly potent smell to his urine. He assumed he was dehydrated, so drank plenty on his flight home but still felt unusually exhausted in the following days. He dismissed it as jet lag.

Cole is Manchester United’s second most prolific Premier League goal-scorer and remains one of the club’s ambassadors - Getty Images/Shaun Botterill

He had gained weight so suddenly that his then-partner pressed him to seek help, so Cole consulted a former United doctor who suggested hospital scans. Cole went in reluctantly and was asked about a series of symptoms, itching and hiccups among them. “I was itching like I had a million ants on me and hiccups wouldn’t stop. Those are the signs you’ve got a problem with your kidney.” He was told if he had put off this hospital visit much longer he could have died.

Immediate medication and treatment stabilised him, including a spell on dialysis. “The day you have it makes you feel a little bit better, the day after is absolutely horrendous. Then by the time you start to feel a little bit better again you’re back on dialysis. It’s not much of a life.”

Nevertheless, he persisted with gym sessions despite feeling hopelessly exhausted afterwards. At one point he was sleeping for 13 hours a day and spending his waking hours willing his condition to improve. “I wouldn’t accept it. I don’t think I actually confessed to being ill until I was about a year in.”

It takes this steadfastness to reach the peaks Cole did in his football career, but it often felt he was held to different standards from some of his peers. He is not a cuddly character, but there is an enduring and unfair image of him as prickly, particularly about his name. He was asked once what his parents called him and answered honestly: Andrew. This was reported as if it was some outlandish diva-like request.

Out of politeness I ask him whether he would prefer Andy or Andrew for our conversation. “I don’t mind at all. I’ve always been Andrew, if you’re christened Andrew that’s what your name is. One day they [a journalist] asked me ‘what’s your name?’ I said Andrew, then it was like ‘Oh Andy Cole wants to be known now as Andrew,’ I got told I was a problem, I was arrogant. It’s my choice. I’m not Prince, I didn’t want to be known as a symbol.”

Many footballers’ careers would not have recovered from Cole’s first setback, being sold by Arsenal to Bristol City in 1992. Instead he made himself into one of the country’s great goalscorers, thriving at Ashton Gate, then at Newcastle United where he became the then most expensive British player in history with a £7m transfer to United.

It was a difficult start under Sir Alex Ferguson, with Cole taking nearly a month to score his first goal, but he has never given up easily. The same thinking could not be applied to his illness. “Mentally I had to concede defeat, first and foremost by saying I was ill. I couldn’t battle it any more.

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“It was tough but gradually I had to start working with it. I tried my best to work against it by going to the gym, trying to be normal, but there was no normal any more. I had to look at things differently.”

He struggled to rationalise the randomness of his condition, with no previous kidney disease in his family and the prospect of a lifetime of drugs. Like many professional sportspeople, Cole regarded them with an instinctive mistrust. “They give you a big bag of medication and in my head I’m like ‘I can’t do that nonsense man, every single day?’. It’s something you have to get your head around and understand, that this is going to get you to the next day and the next day and the next day after that.”

Now there is a constant balancing of side effects against benefits to keep him as well as possible. His nephew Alexander Palmer was his donor. “He came to see me when I was fast asleep, when I woke up he was on the sofa next to me and he said ‘look uncs, I’m going to be your donor.’” Cole tried to talk him out of it, saying he was too young. “We always had a good relationship before that but now it’s even better because part of him now belongs to me. I’ll be forever indebted to him.”

The recovery and acceptance of a drastically changed life was slow, but Cole did at least have a famous visitor to cheer him up during his initial stay in hospital. “My old captain came in one day and I remember the nurse saying to him specifically ‘Mr Keane, please don’t make him laugh, the stitching is really tight.’ I think he was in there five minutes and I couldn’t stop laughing.

“He wouldn’t stop. We just had a great laugh. He’s a genuine person. I had a fantastic time playing with Manchester United and being able to have someone like that turn up for you, when you’re going through a real tough spot, speaks volumes about him.”

Roy Keane was Manchester United captain for all eight of Cole’s seasons at Old Trafford - Reuters/Dan Chung

Covid was another challenge and led to another hospital stay, but now Cole fills his days with what he enjoys. Reliving such upsetting memories in his charity role does not qualify in this category, but Cole keeps at it, in the hope it might help. “I’ve never been that guy to open up and talk about things. I just had this nagging feeling about this ‘what are you going to do?’ I was half battling myself.

“I’m not a guy that wants people talking about them, I just want the quiet life. In the end I think the good angel won, the good angel that was telling me ‘give something back’. I’m not the cure. I’ve had loads of people hit me up on Instagram and say ‘what you’re doing is brilliant, you’re helping me, or my mum, my dad, my brother, whoever.’ That makes me feel really good.

“But I always try to say, you’ve just got to keep going. Whatever you go through, I go through. We might go through it at different stages, we might feel totally different about it. But I’m no different to you. All I have is a voice and I’m always prepared to talk about it.

Money raised by the Andy Cole Fund is used for research into kidney transplants, mental health and wellbeing

“If you’ve got good people who are prepared to listen and try and help you and try to guide you, that’s always half the battle. I surround myself with people with good energy. They won’t get it and understand it, but they will say ‘I hear what you’re saying, what can I do to try and help you move forward?’”

The way Cole is doing this, foregrounding his vulnerability, feels more impactful than a dozen bland and blindly optimistic stories. It takes incredible strength. “I don’t look at it that way.”

Cole writes movingly in his autobiography about his daughter Faith, who also became unwell as a child, with the autoimmune disease lupus. “That’s what I call strong, when I look at her and see what she’s been going through from such a young age.”

Cole has drawn strength from his daughter Faith’s resilience in the face of health struggles - Getty Images/Kate Green

A sedate life goes against Cole’s character and everything that made him such a successful footballer. “I might push too much, but tomorrow’s not a given. I’m not one who just wants to lay in bed when I don’t feel too well. I have to get up and enjoy the day, as my dad always said when I was younger. When I was a kid if I was ever on school holiday and in bed after eight o’clock my dad would go ballistic. There’s no slacking, you ain’t got time to be wasting days in bed.”

There are still what Cole calls “kidney days” when he senses soon after waking that he needs to rest and withdraw. “When the kidney days come I take it for what it is. I might have had two good days before that. I might have had two good weeks before that. So when it comes, I am prepared. I can’t just be moping around. If it’s two days it’s two days, but I know if I can get through those two days I can keep moving forward.”

Despite such challenges Cole has emerged as a great ambassador for his charities, his illness, and certainly a better one for United than any of their current playing staff.

This year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal is supporting four charities: Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, Kidney Research UK, Missing People and Little Troopers. To donate, please visit telegraph.co.uk/appeal2026 or call 0151 317 5247

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